


The Second Captain America

by zombie_socks



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 1940s AU, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4790105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_socks/pseuds/zombie_socks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History forever remembers the great Steve Rogers, remembers his service and his ultimate sacrifice. What it forgot was his replacement. <br/>This is what is different...</p><p> </p><p>A 1940s AU one-shot based off a conversation and a "what if Clint had been Captain America" idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Captain America

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WickedSweetSalt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WickedSweetSalt/gifts).



**The Second Captain America**

 

The call reached HQ at quarter to three on the morning of June 1st, 1944. Captain America was dead. It had been an explosion. Cap had sacrificed his life to save The Howling Commandos.

 **This is what is different** : Bucky Barnes will never be the Winter Soldier. He quits the service upon hearing the news of his best friend. Seventy years in the future when a god comes to Earth there will be no Red White and Blue leader on a team of extraordinary individuals. A Smithsonian exhibit proposal gets rejected in favor of a display on the History of the Occult in America.

On June 2nd, 1944 America’s best-kept secret is presented to the president in a sealed folder: there is a single vial of Erskine’s formula left. Also in the folder is a list of potential candidates, secondary choices made by Erskine before his death. At the top of the list is a name that sounds almost as All-American as Steven Rogers.

On June 4th, 1944 a call is made to the 1063rd regiment stationed near the German boarder. On June 5th, a man is sent to a secret facility in Brooklyn. At 9:30 AM on that same day, Clint Barton becomes the second Captain America.

 **This is what is different** : The Trickster will come to Earth and take over the mind of a SHIELD Agent named Shultz. Shultz doesn’t make it out of the cavern created by the portal when it collapsed. Loki needs a new general to help lead his army. He doesn’t find one.

On June 16th, 1944 an SSR agent named Phil Coulson doesn’t have a completed set of Captain America trading cards because none will ever be made of the media-named “Substitute Cap.” He thinks it a sin and has a photo taken with the man, asks him to sign it. The signature is little more than a scribble. A child of the Dust Bowl and raised by circus folk there after has forced his education to slide. But Coulson and Barton become fast friends. Coulson asks to be sent to Europe when Barton receives his orders.

The Howling Commandos do not take kindly to this “replacement.”

On July 18th, 1944, Clint Barton gets a package with a familiar logo on it. Stark Industries has modified his choice of weaponry. Clint rolls his eyes at the continued patriotic motif until he reads the note attached: Red arrows are explosives, White are armor piercing, and Blue are electric.

On July 19th, 1944 Clint and the Commandos take down a Hydra base. The fight ends as Dum Dum is taken as a human shield. Clint makes an impossible shot, sending an arrow into the Hydra guard’s forehead a mere inch from Dugan’s head. Drinks and celebration follows. Clint finds out he can’t get drunk. He tells Coulson that night it’s the only part about being Cap he likes because it means he could never be like his father.

 **This is what is different** : When the war is over and the Commandos gather in a bar, they toast to two men’s memories instead of one. When their own numbers start dropping, the toasts get longer. When the last one drinks for the final time he writes the toast down and tucks it in his pocket to be buried with him. He wants to read it to his friends when he gets to the other side.

On July 27th, 1944 the Commandos meet with some of the Ally troops. Barton encounters a beautiful redheaded Russian intelligence operative. He speaks to her in her mother tongue, having learned Russian from a strongman in the circus. She tells him he speaks it like an American, that his pronunciation is terrible. With a sly smile he asks her if she’d be willing to teach him. She calls him something very unflattering and stalks away.  

On August 14th, 1944 the redheaded spy gives the Commandos some intel regarding a Hydra base on the Russian border. She offers her help and looks a little shocked when Barton accepts it. He tailors the plan to include her abilities with close range weapons. With her help they take it down with ease. When Barton invites her to celebrate with them she declines. She’s vanished the next morning without a single goodbye. But Barton finds tucked into the pocket of his uniform a Russian pronunciation guide.

 **This is what is different** : A kill order from the Council never goes out on the notorious Black Widow. She is not brought into SHIELD by a blonde archer. When Loki wishes to inherit the Earth, his plan is wretched from his throat by his adopted brother. Thor never forgives himself.  

On September 3rd, 1944 a train is delivering goods to a Hydra base. Clint and his team plan to take it. Agent Coulson comes along to vet any intel or resources that could be useful to the SSR. The team is blind-sided. The train was a trap. Coulson falls to his death out the side of an open train car door.

Zola is brought in for questioning. He says news of their attack came from a redheaded Russian spy.

Clint wishes for the first time in his life that he could get drunk.

 **This is what is different** : After the Battle of New York, after the formation of the Avengers, a ghost haunts the freeway of Washington DC. No one is there to say his name when he pulls off his mask. He doesn’t ask, “Who the hell is Phil?” because Phil hasn’t been there for a long, long time. It is Iron Man who cracks his identity based on an old journal entry of his father’s.

The Russian Redhead makes her way into the camp of the Second Cap and the Howling Commandos. She does not expect to leave it.

She is right.

Though not in the way she intends.

She pleads with them, tells them of the mind control her government put her through and how Red Skull used it against her. She asks Clint to put an arrow through her heart. He takes her hand instead, offers her a chance to redeem herself.

She will later ask him why he gave her a second chance. He tells her it is because he got one.

She joins their team and finds working along side Clint Barton to be as easy as breathing. They do not fight; they dance. She learned grace from the ballet and he from the circus and together they are so artful in their skill it is a beautiful thing to behold.

She lets him kiss her one night in the back hallway of the SSR base. She knows it is not her first kiss; she has seduced too many targets for it to be, even if she doesn’t remember what those felt like. But this, this she feels in her bones and nerves and every cell in her body. She thinks that if she had a soul it would be bound to his.

They don’t talk about how they feel. They never put it in words. But more kisses follow that first one. They joke about running away to an island after the war, just the two of them.

 **This is what is different** : from 1946 to 1973 a private island in the Pacific coast is under the ownership of one Natalie Rushman. She only ever visits there once.

On November 3rd, 1944 the Commandos, the Russian Redhead, and the Second Captain America make their play for Red Skull’s fortress.

Standing before Red Skull and waiting for his team’s arrival, Clint Barton is steadfast. The Skull asks him if he really thinks he can replace such an icon as Captain America. Clint tells him he’s never tried to replace anyone.

Natasha comes crashing through the window; SSR agents and the Commandos storm the halls. Hydra is plucked from the Earth one agent at a time.

Natasha and Clint work in their beautiful tandem, firing bullets and arrows while they dance. But Red Skull runs away and they must chase after him. He boards his massive jet in the hangar and takes off, unaware of the two heroes who have slipped onboard. When they engage him in one more round, he uses the Cosmic Cube, sending a blast of its vast energy Natasha’s way. Clint shoves her away from it. The cube destroys Skull.

Natasha blinks at the blinding blue flash and misses the last breath to ever enter Clint’s lungs. She holds his body, now with a large, singed hole in his side. She tells him she loves him as the plane crashes into ice. 

On January 7th, 1949 Howard Stark leads an expedition in the ice. A body is pulled out of the frozen wasteland. Natasha’s return to life reveals the Soviet’s own Super Soldier program. She vows to shut it down.

 **This is what is different** : Red Room is destroyed before it even begins. Countless girls lead normal lives. Many more are taken by other governments and individuals looking to exploit them. Natasha devotes her life to saving as many as she can. She takes a bullet in her hip from a ghost in Odessa and retires after that. She goes to an island she purchased after the war. She doesn’t stay there.

On April 19th, 1981 Natasha Romanoff is buried in a simple grave and mourned by few. On a wall in the newest SHIELD Facility her name is put on a plaque next to one that hasn’t stuck in the minds of men nor the pages of history.

On April 19th, 1981 The Second Captain America greets the Black Widow on the other side.       

**Author's Note:**

> Have a little more 40s Clintasha in case you needed to slowly let go of Room for Rent (which, thank you times a billion to everyone who read that story. Your response was overwhelming and I loved it!!!) :)   
> Until next time,   
> \- Z_socks


End file.
